Not Set

The huge barquentine Yvonne was wrecked on Plymouth Breakwater in a storm, and stayed there for more than a year until she was deliberately destroyed by fire.

Type

Barquentine

History

Built in 1900 by Hans-Ditlev Bendixsen of Eureka, California, as the John Palmer, the Yvonne was a 68.3m long wooden four-masted barquentine registered in Marseilles. Operating under a French flag and with a Norwegian captain, Gerhard Tonnessen, the vessel departed Jamaica on the 8th of August 1920 with a cargo of logwood bound for Le Havre.  There were 19 crew on board, of seven different nationalities, an American boatswain, French and West Indian seamen, a Jamaican cook called Robert Campbell and a Norwegian chief mate.  They also carried Stephen Brotherton, a 16-year-old Jamaican stowaway who was discovered in the coal bunker when they were three days into their voyage.  As no one gets a free passage on a working ship, the stowaway was employed as an assistant to the cook.

The Yvonne ashore on the Breakwater, click the image for a larger version

For the two months since she left Jamaica, the Yvonne had sailed through a succession of storms, and by Sunday 3rd October, they were coming up the English Channel in a westerly gale.  The seas were mountainous, they had limited ability to steer, and darkness was coming on, so the captain attempted to run for the shelter of Plymouth Sound.  By the time the Yvonne was near the port, the gale-force winds had turned to the south.  With the ship barely under control, the captain sent a radio message requesting a pilot, but no pilot vessel appeared, so he attempted to reach the shelter of Plymouth Sound.  As Yvonne was heading into the harbour in heavy rain and poor visibility, her remaining topsails carried away, and the master could no longer steer.  Shortly after, she ran hard aground on the rocks of the Breakwater, ending up sideways on with huge waves pounding over her hull.

The crew all gathered together on the poop deck, apart from the wireless operator, who sent out repeated distress calls until the sea smashed his radio. Distress rockets were fired and flares burnt in the hope of attracting attention.  The stern of the ship started to collapse, so the crew moved to the forecastle where they stayed huddled together for four hours, cold, wet and expecting to be washed away at any moment.

The flares let off by the crew were seen by a lookout on the nearby Breakwater Fort, so the alarm was raised. Searchlights from the nearby forts were used to light up the wreck as it lay stranded on the Breakwater, letting the crew know that help was on its way.  At midnight, the government tug Rover and the harbour master’s launch towing the lifeboat Eliza Avins made an attempt to reach the Yvonne, the Rover was under the command of the Harbour Master, Cdr. Geoffrey Freyberg R.N., and the lifeboat was under the command of her coxswain, Frederick Eagles.  The launch had been damaged earlier in the day, so when water flooded her engine room, the tow was transferred to the tug.  When the rescue ships reached the Breakwater, where they saw waves 10m high breaking over the Yvonne, 50m to the west of the beacon on the east end of the Breakwater.  The Yealm lifeboat also tried to render assistance, they made their way to the open sea only to meet with the full force of the gale, which stopped them in their tracks.  The sea washed the Yealm boat from stem to stern, knocking the lifeboat volunteers clean off their seats, so they reluctantly admitted defeat and headed home. Coxswain Harry Hockaday said at times he could not see the length of his own boat, and in 22 years as a coxswain, he had never encountered such a horrendous sea.

They could not take the tug out into the huge sea, so she was anchored behind the Breakwater.  Instead, Cdr. Freyberg transferred to the lifeboat, the sails were set, and they tried to sail out of the eastern entrance into the teeth of a southerly gale.  The conditions were atrocious; they couldn’t get the lifeboat alongside without smashing her to pieces, so they retreated to the shelter of the Breakwater’s lee side.  Neither the tug nor the lifeboat could reach the stricken ship, so the only option was for the crew to be picked up from the sea.  The lifeboat signalled their intentions with flares, the crew put on lifebelts and scrambled onto the Breakwater and then jumped into the sea.  The young Jamaican stowaway could not swim, so Captain Tannessan put him over his shoulders and swam both of them to the lifeboat. The crew of the lifeboat dragged 18 people from the sea, and the tug picked up one more, but the 60-year-old cook was found to be missing.  Cdr. Freyberg climbed onto the Breakwater to search for him, but with no luck.  They assumed that the cook had been washed away out of the eastern entrance on the ebb tide, so the tug went to search for him, but was also unsuccessful.  With the shivering crew of the Yvonne on board, the lifeboat was towed into Millbay docks by the tug and arrived at 2:15 in the morning.

By Tuesday 5th, Yvonne was in the same position on the Breakwater.  An examination of the ship at low water by the Captain and a marine surveyor showed considerable amounts of damage to her hull.  The ship was abandoned as a total loss and left in the hands of the insurance underwriters and her population of rats.  The wreck of the Yvonne was left alone on the Breakwater until February, when the cargo of logwood was unloaded by the Cornish Salvage Company.  The ship was to be broken up where she lay, and the hull timbers salvaged and sold, but this did not happen; the ship stayed intact until November, and it was finally decided that the hull must be removed before it broke free and became a hazard to shipping.  The strength of the timber hull was underestimated, and some trial explosions resulted in very little damage to the hull.  A storm in early November had more success in breaking up the ship than the salvors, and the Hoe waterfront was littered with broken timber that had washed from the ship.  Admitting defeat, the Navy set fire to the Yvonne; the hull burned all day and all the following night, leaving very little of the ship to be cleared away.

It has been reported elsewhere that the crew of the Yvonne took refuge in the round steel cage on the east end of the Breakwater.  This did not happen, and there are no records found so far showing that the cage was ever used.

Location and Access

The location of the wreck of the Yvonne, click the image for a larger version

Plymouth Breakwater, east end

The Yvonne was built from timber and the hull was destroyed in a huge fire so the ship would leave very little trace on the seabed.  The first divers to visit the area found many steel hull plates and they assumed they were from the Yvonne not knowing that she was made of timber.  The divers removed several portholes from the plates which were more likely from the nearby armed trawler Abelard .  Divers have reported seeing a large anchor just offshore from the Breakwater which is the correct style to be an anchor from the Yvonne.  Her rudder was also found by a diver, it was raised, towed into Fort Bovisand and dismantled for scrap (picture).

Nearby wrecks include the FS Poulmic , the Fylrix , HMT Abelard and Vectis

Last updated 11 August 2025

Position GPS: 50° 19.987 N 004° 08.311 W
Depth: 5m

Show the site on OpenSeaMap